2620. How portrayals arise, and how they work

When heavenly and spiritual things, that is, those which are of the Lord, and from the Lord in the heavens, come down into the evil world of spirits, and first in fact to the nearest spirits who are in the inward realm of that world, then because of the spirits' nature, namely, their utterly corrupt natural character, what is of a heavenly and spiritual angelic nature is turned into the opposite, thus into contrary purposes, because their natural character looks toward contrary purposes. Hence those things that pass through such a spiritual world still remain portrayals of heavenly ones, as also in the case of the descendants of Jacob. 1748, 16 July.